Sfera Ebbasta
Rockstar

THE REVIEW

ROCKSTAR (2018) 4/10

Maybe to understand the success of this (so to speak) album (the best-selling record in Italy in 2018), you should start from the last song, the 11th one, “Tran Tran”: “...no hablo tu lingua/ma di sicuro piaccio a tua figlia/sicuro, è da un po' che sta in fissa col trap/collane ghiacciate, c'ho il cuore ghiacciato già alla mia età/non puoi parlare dei miei contenuti, fra', non hai l'età...”. Here’s the heart of the matter: this stuff is made by young people, for a young (if not very young) audience who identify with the tattooed and hair-dyed Gionata Boschetti, aka Sfera Ebbasta, king of Cinisello Balsamo (no joke: a few years ago, the mayor, hoping to win over the younger crowd, had Sfera inaugurate the renovation of Cinisello’s main square and the world seemed to collapse), at the time of this third “effort” just 26 years old.

“Rockstar” (which at least has the virtue of being concise: it’s only 34 minutes long) is, according to Sfera himself, his album of maturity, of change—the one in which the topics are women, money, and weed. Not exactly groundbreaking, since trap is always about that; it’s not like we were expecting a dissertation on hermeneutics. Obviously—and how could it be otherwise?—it features a series of songs centered on the “novel” theme of social redemption in the form of big money: I used to have a miserable life, I was dirt poor, even my dad (as he calls him) died, I couldn’t keep a job, but in the end thanks to Youtube (and a questionable generation, if I may add) I made a ton of money and now I look down on you, not like you, loser, who probably studies, works hard, gets paid peanuts for an internship, and drives a Multipla while I zoom by in my Lamborghini showing you, literally, my gold teeth (so very Bronx rapper even though you’re from Cinisello and live in Milan—you really haven’t ventured far). As a message to the new generation, I’d say it’s devastating, but hey, if that’s what makes them happy.

Sfera, who was in fact one of the first to legitimize trap in Italy (creating a whole bunch of crazy copycats like Shiva or Rhove, and some fit for jail like Baby Gang), reaches his third album after two fairly successful releases. The first time I ever saw Sfera was in 2015, three years before this record, immortalized on a giant billboard in the subway. At the time, only a few people outside the ultra-teen universe knew him: he was half-sprawled out in the photo, thousand-carat smile, skinny jeans just to show off his package, white untied Nike Air Force (like all the kids), jewelry everywhere, hefty gold chain, and half-shaved, half-pink hair. To me, not knowing him, he looked like a caricature of something, and I thought he was a comedian or something like that, but no, he was a singer (well, singer—without autotune he’d sing like my grandfather in the shower, badly). In 2018, the year trap finally blew up, on the radio you’d hear Fedez and J-Ax with “Italiana,” Ghali with “Cara Italia,” Giusy Ferreri somewhere between “Amore e capoeira” and the valiant Sfera, teamed up with Quavo, with “Cupido.” Which is truly a terrible song, but then, listening to the whole album, you realize it’s actually the least bad one.

There’s “Sciroppo” (guess what it’s about?); there’s “Ricchi X sempre” (I bet you can guess that one too); there’s “Serpente a sonagli,” which refers to all the bros who sniticchano; there’s “Leggenda” about kids who are born, live, and try to escape from “quei palazzi,” and so on and so forth. The problem is there isn’t a single beat that’s even slightly interesting (and this with Charlie Charles producing, who’s usually more or less a guarantee of quality) and there isn’t a line, not even a single barra that can be even remotely remembered, also because our guy isn't exactly a “great writer”: he never closes his rhymes, he can’t do wordplay, his dissing is at an elementary school level (take your pick which grade!). And when he timidly tries to take it up a notch (see the title-track, which even quotes Gianni Morandi, so much for the new blood!), he crashes into a wall like someone meant to drive a Multipla but insists on handling a Lamborghini.

But, to go back to the beginning, maybe it’s just me, or maybe it’s all of us—aged and nostalgic for a kind of music that doesn't exist anymore—who simply can’t understand someone like Sfera, the Italian Eminem (so he says).